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Renowned
linguist Dr. D. N. Shankara Bhat’s new English-Kannada dictionary titled English-Kannada Padanerake (Kannada: ಇಂಗ್ಲಿಶ್-ಕನ್ನಡ ಪದನೆರಕೆ)was released last Sunday. It has been co-authored by Y Bharath Kumar and Vivek Shankar, both engineers by profession with
interest in the field of linguistics.

While there
are several English-Kannada dictionaries already available in the market, this
work is quite different from the rest in three key aspects –

The
Kannada synonyms of English words provided in the dictionary are all mostly native
Kannada words, with a very minimal number having their roots in other languages

Along with native Kannada words in popular use, it also includes newly coined words, especially those corresponding to the fields of commerce, science, technology, and
other modern fields of study

It
has a sizable number of words coined by commoners and enthusiasts through the Facebook
group Pada Pada Kannada Padane

In all, there
are about 18,000 English words listed in the dictionary, to which, about 45,000
Kannada equivalents have been provided. It also contains several detailed
examples illustrating the use of words in their different shades of meaning.

A good
portion of words contained in most Kannada dictionaries of today are of
Sanskrit origin that are not easily comprehensible to a common Kannada speaker.
This is particularly true of words used in the fields of science and
technology. Such words, owing to their unfamiliarity, appear quite complex and largely
fail to convey the intended meaning.

As of
today, not much work has been done in building science vocabulary in Kannada.
We are mostly reliant on English, which makes learning difficult for commoners.
And whatever new Kannada words that have been coined, especially the terminologies used in
scientific literature, are mostly constructed from Sanskrit root
words. Most of these words, as said above, appear complex and not easily
understandable.

This
dictionary tries to fill the gap by providing words that are easy to comprehend
and use. Kannada equivalents to scientific terms provided in the new dictionary
are very close to native words used in common speech. The use of native words
in coining new terms also has the inherent advantage of making use of native Kannada grammatical rules. Hence, not only is it easy to comprehend a new word and the
associated concept, subject matter experts and common Kannada speakers alike can coin new words all by themselves.

By coining
words that are closer to people’s language, and using them in building content
in science and technology, several issues concerned with learning can be
effectively resolved over a period of time, serving as an enabler to students
studying science in the Kannada medium.

And these
concerns are not just limited to Kannada, but pervasive across many other Indian
languages. Such language communities too should consider coining words in their
own languages to build their word stock, chiefly scientific lexicon, by the use
of well-known and commonly used words.

Needless to
say, the dictionary is just the first step in the long journey of building
corpus in Kannada. It is unprecedented in that excepting a few individual
attempts at coining words in native Kannada no other initiative has yet taken
up the task in such an organized manner and scale.

The
dictionary, released last Sunday, will be available in the market shortly. One
may follow Dr. Bhat’s website for the latest updates.

In 2013 Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and
Industry (FICCI) articulated a vision for higher education in India to be realized
before the year 2030. Called Higher Education in India – Vision 2030, it recommends “goals, policy imperatives and implementation roadmap to
make higher education boost the growth of India to become the third-largest
US$10 trillion economy of the world”.

A Summit on higher education in India by FICCI held earlier
this month, brought out a report on the current status of higher education and a roadmap for the vision. The
report titled State focused roadmap to India's Vision 2030 "is
aimed at developing strategies to align the FICCI Vision 2030 on higher
education for the Indian states”.

To achieve the vision it calls out a few imperatives –

The report identifies three categories of imperatives – social,
economic and intellectual – and recognizes crucial targets to be achieved under
each category. The value of such categorization and targets is fairly evident
and admirable, but it is also important to understand the merits and efficacy of
the use of mother tongue or people’s language in realizing the three
imperatives. In the developed world mother tongue is considered the bedrock of
education but in the Indian Union the notion is conspicuously absent in popular
public discourse.

Consider the social imperative of achieving gross enrollment
ratio (GER) of 50% in higher education. Studies have revealed that mother
tongue based education has not only helped impart effective education but also
achieve higher enrollment rates. Research after research has revealed that
students learn better when taught in mother-tongue, and learning results are meager when the medium of instruction is a non-native language, more so for those
from socially and economically backward sections. Hence, focus on quality
mother tongue based education can not only help improve enrollment but also close
the disparity in enrollments.

The report’s economic imperatives aim for a skilled and
job-ready work force. Skills can only be built on a strong educational
foundation, to which mother tongue is key. Low employability of graduates has
long been a concern in India. A national
employability study conducted by Aspiring Minds shows that the
employability in the IT Product and KPO sectors, for example, are as low as
4.2% and 9.5%. One of the important reasons for such low employability is the
lack of fundamentals required for a job: good educational foundation,
comprehension skills, communication skills, analytical reasoning, creativity, conceptual
thinking etc. Quality mother tongue based education can help better address
these fundamentals.

The intellectual imperatives like high-quality research
output and creating a world-class research eco-system also require that students
be able to continue their higher education, including research in all subjects
of sciences in their mother tongues. We have argued
in Karnatique earlier that the highly innovative nations are the ones with
higher education systems in people’s language.

Of course, enabling our languages to be able to express
concepts of science and technology, and building world-class institutions in
them, will not happen overnight. But undoubtedly this is the only way by which
we can achieve success as evinced by the success stories of countries like Switzerland,
Sweden, Israel, Finland, Korea etc., which top the global
innovation index. In these countries students have the option to pursue
education in their languages at all levels.

The document clearly calls out the fact that most of higher
education is under the control of the states and hence any real change or
transformation can be brought about only by actions at the level of the states.
99% of an estimated 46,430 institutions of higher education in India are under
the ambit of the state governments. 97% of the 21.8 million enrolments are
under the control of the states. Also, 67% of public expenditure on higher
education (INR 384.6 billion) is contributed by the states.

In a union of states, as diverse and as heterogeneous as
India, every issue should be comprehended and dealt with at the level of
individual states. So, the report rightly understands the heterogeneous nature
of the issue and recommends the shift of focus of execution from the national
level to the state level to be able achieve any real transformation.

Since each state is different and the level of development
in higher education is different, the report rightly recommends different
action plans for different states. But one of key things for the states in the
process of implementation is to consider the language aspect. This aspect can
help address several issues with respect to 'access, equity and quality' that the report emphasizes.

However, the value of peoples’ languages in education has
hardly been understood and appreciated in public discourse in the Indian Union,
let alone being effectively harnessed. Hence the states need a long term vision
and commitment towards the use of mother tongues in education, and to be able
to realize Vision 2030 it is absolutely essential that they invest on the
languages of their peoples.

Krishna Gopal, joint secretary of the RSS, in a briefing
to the media has expressed concerns over impending 'demographic imbalance'
in India. Hence, he has urged the Union Government to reformulate the National
Population Policy. Here is an excerpt from the press report in DNA that had
covered this in more detail:

The policy, he said, aimed at
achieving a stable but healthy population by 2045 by optimising the fertility
rate to the ideal figure of 2.1 total fertility rate (TFR) and it was expected
that it would be applied uniformly to all sections of the society as this aim
was in accordance with the national resources and expected future requirements.

However, the National Fertility
& Health Survey (NFHS) of 2005-06 and the 0-6 age group population
percentage data of religion in Census 2011, both indicate that the TFR and
child ratio "is uneven across the religions", he said.

Krishna Gopal is right in saying that the fertility rates
should be uniform across all sections of the society, and uneven TFRs may lead
to serious demographic imbalances. If India aims to achieve the ideal fertility
rate of 2.1, it is necessary that all sections of the society uniformly achieve
fertility rates of 2.1.

While the RSS’s concern for uneven TFR and the resulting
demographic imbalance is based on religious parameters, it is equally important
to consider regional and linguistic parameters in the population equation. For,
the Union of India is not only diverse in terms of religions but also
linguistically and culturally diverse, and such consideration is important. So,
let us consider the past TFRs (2007), TFR goals for the eleventh
five year plan (2007-12), and the latest available TFR data of some of the
states of the Indian Union.

State

Fertility Rate 2007

Eleventh Five Year Plan Target
(2012)

Fertility Rate 2013

West Bengal

2.2

1.8

1.6

Punjab

2.2

1.8

1.7

Tamil Nadu

1.8

1.7

1.7

Andhra Pradesh

2.1

1.8

1.8

Maharashtra

2.2

1.9

1.8

Karnataka

2.3

1.8

1.9

Gujarat

2.8

2.2

2.3

Madhya Pradesh

3.7

2.6

2.9

Uttar Pradesh

4.4

3.0

3.1

Bihar

4.3

3.0

3.4

As can be seen from the above table, many states were given
TFR goals well below 2.1 for the eleventh five-year plan. On what basis did the
Planning Commission set TFR targets below 2.1, to states like West Bengal,
Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka etc.? Was not the Planning Commission aware that
such targets are unscientific and can lead to large demographic imbalances when
it set them? Didn’t the planning commission know that TFR below 2.1 is suicidal
to any community? Or was it deliberate?

Incompetence or deliberation, such an act by a ‘national’
institute of such repute will be interpreted as an unethical one and will lead
to mistrust in India’s federal setup.

It seems, the twelfth
five year plan (2012-2017) too has not considered the state-wise uneven
TFRs, especially those falling below the replacement levels. In reviewing the
goals accomplished in the eleventh five year plan, the twelfth plan makes an
interesting observation –

Replacement
level TFR, namely 2.1, has been attained by nine states. High fertility remains
a problem in seven States…

In reality, those nine states namely, West Bengal, Punjab,
Himachal Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka
and Jammu and Kashmir, have not just achieved a replacement level TFR of 2.1,
but they are actually dangerously slipping below that level. And this is all by
plan.

The twelfth plan does not alarm these states of their
dropping TFR levels, but has set an overall target for India at 2.1, which it
aims to achieve by 2017. On the reduction of India’s TFR to 2.1 the planning
commission says:

India is on track for the
achievement of a TFR target of 2.1 by 2017, which is necessary to achieve net
replacement level of unity, and realise the long cherished goal of the National
Health Policy, 1983 and National Population Policy of 2000

How will this be achieved? As is evident, it will not be
achieved by maintaining a healthy TFR of 2.1 across all member states and
demography of the Union. It will be achieved by further slumping the TFRs of
the Kannadigas, the Tamils, the Marathis, the Bengalis and the Punjabis, whose
fertility rates are already well below replacement levels. Whereas the
population of states like Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh will continue
to grow.

Just last week, China announced a shift from its decades-old one-child policy to a two-child policy in the wake of decreasing TFR and ageing population. If RSS is sincerely concerned about all the peoples of India, represented by diverse languages and cultures, it should also consider uneven and falling TFR levels of the above mentioned regions seriously. It is its political associate, the BJP, which currently holds the reins of power at New Delhi. So, the RSS should to take up the issue with the Government of India. At the same time, the NDA government should earnestly work towards getting the fertility rate of these non-Hindi states upwards to 2.1.